The Dungeon's Front Door & Other Things in the Deep Dark

By Alexis D. Smolensk

Join an intrepid, rakish day adventure into the fantasy dungeon, the staple of fantasy role-playing games. Here are 13 essays surveying the sub-structure of dungeons and their philosophy, what makes them popular and what we can do to expand their potential. With humour, inventiveness and biting sarcasm, Smolensk uncovers the relationship between dungeons and post-apocalyptic survival, digs into the megadungeon, breaks the fourth wall and reveals the dual natures of time and fate hidden behind the Dungeon’s Front Door. A great experimenter, there are few who can compare with Smolensk’s drive and dedication.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781312969117

Book preview

The Dungeon's Front Door & Other Things in the Deep Dark

The Dungeon’s Front Door

& Other Things

in the Deep Dark

by

Alexis D. Smolensk

PEGASUS RIDER PUBLICATIONS

ISBN: 978-1-312-96911-7

First Printing: 2015

Copyright © Pegasus Rider

Cover Photo: Nicholaus Vieira

www.crazycaver.com

Author’s Blog: tao-dnd.blogspot.com

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

The Dungeon’s Front Door

Introduction

The Dungeon’s Front Door

Everywhere a Dungeon

Venturing into Cataclysm

Rest

Wyrd

Flora in the Recesses

Specialists

Dungeon Extractions, Inc.

Breaking the Fourth Wall

The Empty Room

A Door Too Far

The Personal Game

Introduction

Before completing this book, I had considered adjusting the present-day appearance of the figure on the front cover.  For anyone who cares to look at the image in a good light, it will not be hard to discern an orange hardhat through the dim light, a blue water bottle and a climbing harness, all standard equipment for anyone adventuring underground nowadays.  Suggestions were made that I should give the subject a set of horns, disturbing bright eyes or simply black out the shape entirely – all of which I did not do.

Somehow, I felt that change for fantasy’s sake would be too on the nose, even clichéd . . . and as I grew familiar with the image over a period of months, I began to feel that a change would diminish the sheer beauty of the landscape that it depicts – a place on this Earth that is completely real, just as it appears.

The location, as photographer and caver Nicholaus Vieira told me, is found under a mountain in the Selkirk Range in British Columbia, located within Glacier National Park near Roger’s Pass.  To reach the point where the photograph was taken, Nick and friends spent thousands of hours spent researching, training, organizing and exploring a cave system that he calls Raspberry Rising.  As of 2014, the passageway on the book cover had never known the sound of a human’s footsteps.

In real life, far from the fantasies of dungeons, it takes many, many incursions to explore the interior of a cave.  It means hauling several trips worth of gear up to the entrance, reconnoitering the space within, storing goods, making preparations to climb if need be . . . and in the case of Raspberry, bringing along dive gear.

The Raspberry cave system is formed from a sink-hole that can be found below Tupper Glacier.  Steadily, over millennia, the water dribbling into the mountain has formed an unknown number of parallel passages, descending more than two thousand feet over several miles.  This we know only because dye tracing proves a relationship between the sink hole and the Raspberry’s entrance – though the actual system between the two has not yet been fully explored.

Nick’s party are following the stream upwards through the heart of the Mount Tupper, climbing waterfalls (sometimes strictly by feel, due to spray) and cascades, seeking the stream’s trunk passage through the mountain.  Five times on this journey, they have encountered a sump. These are places where the passage dips, allowing the stream to fill the passage with water, something like the U-curve under a kitchen sink.  Raspberry’s sumps are long, technically difficult and too large – and inaccessible – to drain.  Thus they can only be passed by cave diving – which means that at each stage along the journey, Nick’s party must bring along their scuba gear in order to navigate their way through.

While sumps can have clear water, Nick tells me that some of these in Raspberry have a consistency like chocolate milk.  Thus, in scuba gear, deep below the Earth’s surface, he is literally feeling his way blind through a tunnel the shape of which is impossible to know.  Sumps like this can take a lot of dives to fully explore.

How far is all this from the rather mild process of exploring a D&D Dungeon?  Comparatively, I cannot help but view most of the dungeons I’ve run as a sort of Fun House joke, as far from anything truly dangerous as it is possible to get.

Then again, I remind myself that dungeons in the real world do not have creatures living there, who surely would take the time to knock out a few narrow passages, put in a door or two, level the floors and perhaps take up a broom and a mop and make the underground presentable.  Of course, that gives me the image of an orc wearing a French maid’s costume – try to get that out of your head!

Thus I am reconciled with the potentially game-shattering realities of real caves – though there’s little doubt that I’m due to examine more fully the principles and practice of what the spelunking world can offer.  That is, provided I’m not required to go underground.  It isn’t that I’m claustrophobic or anything – after a lifetime of writing and editing in dark, dank rooms, surrounded only by the dim glow of the computer monitor, being in the dark is something of a habit.  It is only that as I get older, I become increasingly clumsy and increasingly colder.  I doubt I have the wherewithal to climb a ten-metre high waterfall.

This series of essays do not, therefore, attempt to dissuade the reader from running the traditional dungeon found in D&D.  Rather, I have sought to rant over a few of the tropes while mocking others, then deconstructing that which remains.  Amid the philosophical approach that tends to possess me when speaking about the things I love, the reader will discover a collection of positive, useful thoughts I have accumulated about dungeons.  Within, I will describe what a dungeon is and what it means to be in one.  I will suggest ways to flesh out and provide substance to the underground and its inhabitants.  I have included some humorous moments and taken time to wonder what it is that makes dungeons popular – for they are popular, despite all the goofiness and absurdity of their existence.

The preposterous notion of dungeons – as slashingly brilliant as their invention was – will forever entice some poor soul to write, grinding along, of all the things that we already know to be terribly wrong about them.  It is truly a sign of something’s value when it will withstand criticism that is 100% true about that thing’s badness.  How awesome is it that sensibility makes no difference?  For all the influence that reason has to say about the existence of dungeons, it might as well be an exhausted, wrecked hamster rocking back and forth on a very small wheel.

Therefore, I expect to still be running dungeons thirty years from now . . . for parties that will still be excited to gain admittance.  Whenever a DM begins to feel that the game is getting out of hand, whenever there are clear signs that a new campaign or adventure is needed, the dungeon is there.  When the players want to indulge in nostalgia: the dungeon is there.  Whenever we’re looking for cutting edge, for the risk of a total party kill, for a little hack and haul away the loot: the dungeon is there.

Or rather, I should say here – as the dungeon is what you have in your hands right now.  The dungeon as I see it.  Therefore, let’s stop loitering outside.  Let’s pick up our weapons and see what there is to kill.

Alexis Smolensk

2015

The Dungeon’s Front Door

The open door was a cherished notion that became a part of my self-awareness in my middle teens.  When I was 16, many authority figures in my life were terribly anxious to open doors for me – doors into science, professionalism and privilege, things that strangled my creative sensibilities like a noose.  I could see too well that these same figures were equally anxious to close doors – doors that they perceived would lead into corruption, failure and darkness.  Everything that I wanted to do, that I loved to do – write, play RPGs, explore the world – were described as frivolous and unworthy.  Better that these doors be closed, authorities said, in order that I could pursue a life of structure, rigor and respectability.

I did not want closed doors.  I could not see how leaving all the doors open could necessarily lead me to harm.  I still cannot see that.  An open door is freedom, it is choice.  Open doors allow for fresh air, for seeing beyond the rooms that we inhabit.  Most of all, open doors allow for visitors.

I have had arguments in my life with people who were ready to slam doors shut and lock themselves in, no matter what the consequences.  As I have watched others age around me, I have seen more and more doors close, each one adding to the darkness.  I believe this is done thoughtlessly, out of fear.  For some, an open door is terrifying.  Perhaps it is too hard for them to see a door without having the strength of will to either resist its temptation or walk through. They must close each door, bracing and bolting it, before they can feel safe.  For